Coronavirus in the United States - news and thoughts

Why are Florida cases spiking? We’re about middle for states % getting Vaxed.

 

Here in the Daytona area businesses are reporting record numbers. Better than the hey days of the 60s 70s and 80s where people made fortunes. Roads are packed. Plenty of anti vaccine sentiment supported here as well. I imagine it is a combination of factors.

 

My theory: we have a huge elderly population in FL which would skew the overall numbers.

If you could move down through non-senior age groups I bet those groups are near rock bottom along with other Deep South states.

 

Friend of mine works at a testing site and another in the ER. Says that many of the cases coming in are in their 30s and 40s this time. No exact numbers so basically anecdotal but still significant if true.

 

Bingo!

 

The data is pretty clear. 1 death vs 417 deaths. No excuses not to get vaccinated.

 

So, this has been everywhere from this board to the media to even in a CDC release, and it is inaccurate. PCR tests measure number RNA copies per unit volume. However, that does not equate to active, replicating virons in anything close to a 1:1 manner necessarily. Thus, PCR results Do Not measure Viral Load, they measure RNA copies or fragments!

There are several groups trying to study samples from infected people who were vaccinated, not vaccinated or were previously infected to measure both PCR values and antigen levels to determine Viral load. Early suggestions are that the 1000x number of RNA copies is not accounting for neutralized (destroyed) virons and thus that 1000-1200× higher number does not mean the same thing for vaccinated vs unvaccinated people.

Nit-picky perhaps, but the gross misuse of terms and data in the media, uneducated public health officials and politicians (heck, even the CDC said it wrong this past week) continues to hurt the fight to accurately explain the public what is really going on.

 

Everyone is spiking. Population adjusted we aren't doing as bad.

 

They may have been joking a bit with this, but this is a really good idea for targeted advertising. If you look at the geography of fragile masculinity, this notion that you need to be more manly to avoid anybody questioning your manhood, it lines pretty perfectly up with the geography of vaccination. Some of the same people saying that they don't want bill gates implanting them with chips or whatever in relation to the vaccine are willing to buy whatever crazy concoction that somebody came up with and claims stops ED.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...to-men-secretly-insecure-about-their-manhood/

Reaching people isn't as simple as having a NASCAR driver say get vaccinated. Cut through to their fear and insecurities.

 

I know this story has been mentioned a few times on covid threads, but to follow up on Phil Valentine, the conservative radio host in Nashville who was critical of vaccinations, downplaying covid too...until he caught covid. Seems he is fighting for his life now. The other day he had to go on a ventilator, now doctors have to transfer him to another hospital to be put on an ECMO oxygen machine.
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A conservative radio host who downplayed vaccines on his show is on an oxygen machine after a severe COVID-19 infection

He has since been hospitalized and is on an oxygen machine, brother Mark Valentine wrote in a Facebook post on Friday.

"Phil made it through the nite. He needs to be on an EKMO (sic) machine which is lung part of a heart/lung machine," he said, referring to an "extracorporeal membrane oxygenation" (ECMO) machine, which acts as an artificial lung and heart for the body.

"We're trying to get him to a hospital with that equipment via helicopter," his post continued. "The protocol requires he be able to be on his back for several hours which I didn't think he could do…but he did!"

In another update posted Saturday morning, Mark said Phil is in "critical but stable" condition.

 

what it boils down to is you cannot, no matter how much you try, convince people to do what they do not want to do. smokers still smoke, alchoholics still drink, getting all bent out of shape on hopeless situations just leads to personal frustration.

 

Given that we're all in this mess together, people's psychological resistance to help defeat this infectious disease, for whatever reason, is what prompts mitigation and vaccination mandates. Reason and shaming do not work.

The only thing likely to be effective in convincing the obstinate is fear.

 

The other side is to slow spread and mutations, you need quick high vaccination rates or you start over.

All for one, one for all versus me for myself.

 

I don't know. FL looks pretty rough in the per population stats.

cases/100k.....hosp/100k.....deaths/100k.....fully vaxxed
2nd..................1st..................4th....................24th

Average in the vax rate, but the cases, hosp, and deaths are way up in FL.

 

Less than 0.001% of fully vaccinated Americans died after a Covid-19 breakthrough case, CDC data shows - CNN

(CNN) Less than 0.004% of people fully vaccinated against Covid-19 experienced a breakthrough case resulting in hospitalization and less than 0.001% died from the disease, according to the latest data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.


The CDC reported 6,587 Covid-19 breakthrough cases as of July 26, including 6,239 hospitalizations and 1,263 deaths.

At that time, more than 163 million people in the United States were fully vaccinated against Covid-19

 

What is the rate among the unvaccinated?

 

We are going to completely wear out our healthcare workers. I stated in another thread that if health care workers do not get vaccinated then they should be let go. @slightlyskeptic pointed out that this was unlikely as hospitals were already struggling to fully, properly staff. I believe now that @slightlyskeptic is 100% correct and that I am very much wrong on this point.

This is how bad it has become: My mother, who was forced to retire from Broward County's largest hospital system at 71, is being offered jobs again. From Memorial Hospital to a system in Los Angeles and one in Detroit have called and offered her contract work as an RN just within the past 3-4 weeks....again (this is round 2 in the job offers). I mean seriously, I love my mom, but not even I want that 80 year old, blind in one eye from macular degeneration, nurse measuring out my medication and supervising my care. This is just crazy. At the same time, our friend here in NC is a floor nurse on what was the local "Covid hospital" and she had 3 nurses quit over the past few months due to being completely warn out.

If the anti-vaxxers refuse to acknowledge anything, they must be forced to acknowledge that they are killing our hospital specialists from doctors, to nurses, to assistants, to therapists and even to administrative people.

 

They don’t care.

Self-centeredness is a feature, not a bug.